Caribbean Midyear 2025: Tourism Peaks, Property Yields Strong and Guyana Oil Hits New Milestone

Publication Date: 3 July 2025  |  Coverage Period: 3 June – 2 July 2025

Morning Briefing

• Caribbean hotel occupancy for June 2025 reached record levels across multiple markets, with the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association reporting that eight member destinations recorded their highest-ever June occupancy rates as the summer travel season opened strongly.
• Guyana’s ExxonMobil-led oil consortium has confirmed that Stabroek Block production crossed the 590,000 barrels-per-day threshold in June, with the next FPSO vessel expected to push capacity above 650,000 bpd before the end of 2025.
• The Caribbean Development Bank’s midyear economic outlook projects regional GDP growth of 4.2 percent for 2025, led by Guyana at an estimated 34 percent, with Jamaica, Barbados, and the Dominican Republic all forecast to exceed 3 percent growth for the full year.
• Short-term rental platforms serving the Caribbean — including Airbnb and VRBO — report that June 2025 bookings across the region were up 28 percent year-on-year in revenue terms, driven by higher average daily rates and strong occupancy in tourism-zone villa and apartment markets.
• The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, which opened June 1, formed its first named storm within the first two weeks, prompting regional governments to confirm that emergency preparedness frameworks and contingent financing facilities are activated and ready.
• Grenada’s Citizenship by Investment programme reported its strongest first-half real estate transaction volume since the programme’s expansion in 2022, with real estate option investments driving a 22 percent increase in CBI approvals compared to H1 2024.

Caribbean Midyear Economic Review: The Strongest Half in a Generation

The Caribbean Development Bank’s midyear economic outlook, released in late June, confirms what the tourism, real estate, and investment data have been signalling for several months: the Caribbean is in the midst of what may be its strongest economic performance in a generation. Regional GDP growth of 4.2 percent for the full year 2025 — if delivered — would represent the highest sustained growth rate across the Caribbean Community since the immediate post-hurricane recovery surge of 2018, and would be achieved this time without the distorting base effects of a prior catastrophe, making it a genuine reflection of underlying economic vitality.

The growth is not uniformly distributed. Guyana’s extraordinary 34 percent expansion — driven by the arithmetic of rapidly growing oil production against a small base economy — is the headline figure that dominates the regional aggregate. But the more telling story for the property and investment community is the breadth of the expansion below Guyana’s outlier performance. Jamaica at 3.4 percent growth, Barbados at 3.1 percent, the Dominican Republic at 5.2 percent, and Trinidad and Tobago at 2.8 percent collectively represent the best synchronised Caribbean economic expansion in many years. Even the smaller Eastern Caribbean economies, which have been navigating the post-pandemic recovery of their tourism-dependent fiscal positions, are showing growth rates that compare favourably with their pre-2020 trajectories.

For property investors, the macroeconomic context provided by the CDB outlook is a constructive backdrop. GDP growth, when it is driven by genuine tourism expansion, infrastructure investment, and energy sector development rather than purely by debt-funded public expenditure, typically supports property market performance through multiple channels: it creates employment and income that underpin domestic mortgage demand, it generates business confidence that drives commercial property absorption, and it supports the tourism revenues that sustain the short-term rental and hotel investment ecosystem that is so central to Caribbean real estate investment returns.

The regional macroeconomic risks are well understood and have not disappeared despite the positive short-term picture. The above-normal 2025 hurricane season, now confirmed as active and having produced early named storm activity, remains the most immediate risk to the growth outlook. Global interest rate dynamics — where major central banks are beginning to ease from the restrictive levels of 2023–24 but have not yet delivered the full normalisation that would dramatically reduce borrowing costs for Caribbean development projects — continue to weigh on development economics and housing affordability. And the structural fiscal vulnerabilities of several Caribbean states — including high public debt ratios and limited fiscal space for counter-cyclical spending — mean that any significant exogenous shock could rapidly erode the comfortable growth picture of the first half of 2025.

June Occupancy Records: Caribbean Tourism at Its Peak

The Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association’s confirmation that eight destinations recorded their highest-ever June occupancy rates is a remarkable performance signal for a month that has historically been considered part of the Caribbean’s shoulder season. The structural shift in Caribbean tourism demand — driven by changing work patterns, the year-round appeal of Caribbean destinations to a growing North American middle class, and the aggressive airlift expansion that has connected new source markets to Caribbean airports — is lifting the floor of off-peak performance in a way that transforms the investment economics of Caribbean hotel and villa assets.

In practical terms, higher June occupancy means that the revenue curve for Caribbean tourism properties is becoming smoother and more predictable across the calendar year. Historically, Caribbean hotel investors have needed to model very significant occupancy swings between the December–March peak and the summer shoulder, creating cash flow profiles that required conservative leverage assumptions to service debt through the low season. If June is now performing at levels that were previously associated with early peak season, the investment case for Caribbean hospitality assets strengthens materially — both through higher total revenue and through the reduced seasonality risk that makes lender underwriting more comfortable.

Short-term rental performance is amplifying the trend. The 28 percent year-on-year revenue growth in Caribbean Airbnb and VRBO bookings for June reflects both volume growth and meaningful average daily rate improvement, suggesting that the short-term rental market is not simply absorbing displaced hotel demand but is creating genuine incremental demand by offering a product that the traditional hotel sector cannot replicate. For villa and apartment property investors, June 2025 is providing direct validation of the investment thesis that underpins Caribbean short-term rental assets, and the data will feed into the valuations and yield calculations that inform purchase decisions through the second half of the year.

Guyana’s Oil Milestone: 590,000 Barrels and Rising

The confirmation that Guyana’s Stabroek Block crossed the 590,000 barrels-per-day production threshold in June is a landmark data point in one of the most significant oil development stories of the current decade. When ExxonMobil made its first major Guyana discovery in 2015, few analysts predicted that the country would reach anything close to this production rate within ten years. The speed and scale of the Stabroek development — driven by a remarkably rich and geologically consistent resource base, the efficiency of ExxonMobil’s project execution capability, and a relatively favourable regulatory and fiscal framework — has consistently outpaced even optimistic projections.

The next major production milestone — the 650,000 bpd threshold that the consortium expects to reach following the deployment of the next FPSO vessel before year-end — will place Guyana’s offshore production among the top 25 producing nations globally, a remarkable achievement for a country with a population of under one million people. The per-capita fiscal implications of this production scale are extraordinary: at current oil prices and production-sharing arrangements, Guyana’s government revenues from the oil sector are funding a public investment programme that would be exceptional for an economy many times its size.

The Guyanese real estate market in Georgetown and the coastal corridor is responding to the continued expansion of the oil-related expatriate and domestic professional population. The supply of high-specification residential property — gated communities, serviced apartment complexes, and detached houses meeting international standards of construction and amenity — has increased substantially over the past three years as developers have responded to demand, but it continues to lag behind the growth of qualified demand. Rental yields in this segment remain among the Caribbean’s strongest, with premium residential properties achieving yields of 8–12 percent in annual rental income terms, driven by the long-term lease demand of oil sector employees and their employers.

Property Yields in Tourism Zones: The Investment Case Strengthens

Beyond Guyana, the strongest property investment yields in the Caribbean continue to be concentrated in tourism zones where short-term rental performance is driven by genuine destination demand rather than speculative developer activity. The June occupancy records confirm the underlying demand fundamentals that support these yields, and the expanding short-term rental revenue data provides investors with a richer and more granular picture of where yields are strongest and most sustainable.

In Jamaica, the north coast has continued to demonstrate the strongest combination of yield and capital appreciation. Properties in the Montego Bay, Ocho Rios, and Falmouth corridors that are professionally managed as short-term rentals are achieving gross yields in the 9–14 percent range for well-located, well-equipped assets — returns that compare very favourably with the lower-risk but also lower-return alternatives available in major international property markets. The National Housing Trust’s mortgage activity in the domestic market is also supporting a healthy secondary market in residential properties within commuting range of the tourism employment clusters, providing a different investment entry point for buyers focused on the domestic rental market.

St Lucia has emerged as one of the stronger performers in the Eastern Caribbean tourism property sector during the first half of 2025, driven by the expansion of its airlift connections, the opening of several new boutique hotel and villa resort developments, and a growing reputation as a premium alternative to Barbados for buyers seeking a less commercialised luxury Caribbean experience. The Soufriere and Rodney Bay areas have both recorded above-average property transaction volumes for H1 2025, and several international property development firms have identified St Lucia as a target market for new villa project launches in the 2025–26 development cycle.

The Hurricane Season Opens: Early Activity and Market Attention

The formation of the first named storm of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season within the first two weeks of June — an early start relative to historical norms — prompted regional governments and Caribbean tourism operators to issue their standard activation-of-preparedness communications. The early named storm activity, while not involving a significant threat to any major Caribbean tourism island, has reinforced the above-normal seasonal forecast and reminded the property and investment community that the hurricane season overlay is a constant backdrop to Caribbean market activity from June through November.

For property investors entering the Caribbean market in 2025, the hurricane season context is best understood through the lens of risk-adjusted return rather than binary fear. The Caribbean has sustained multiple above-normal hurricane seasons since 2017, and the property markets of the islands that were most severely impacted — including Barbuda, Abaco, and the British Virgin Islands — have demonstrated meaningful recovery even from the most severe events. The key investment risk factors are insurance coverage adequacy, construction standard compliance, and location-specific exposure, rather than the existence of a hurricane season per se.

Several Caribbean governments have used the season opening to announce enhanced insurance requirements for properties in high-risk coastal zones, and to publicise the CCRIF coverage arrangements that provide government-level fiscal protection from major storm events. These communications are part of an ongoing effort by regional authorities to ensure that the hurricane risk is appropriately priced and managed rather than ignored or avoided, and they reflect the maturation of the Caribbean’s institutional approach to disaster risk management over the past decade.

Caribbean Leaders This Month

Strongest economy: Guyana at 34 percent GDP growth and 590,000 barrels per day of oil production stands unchallenged as the Caribbean’s dominant economic story in the first half of 2025, transforming the country’s fiscal capacity and property market simultaneously.

Best tourism performance: The Dominican Republic edges Jamaica for the top tourism slot this month, with June hotel occupancy records across its diversified resort portfolio and visitor arrival figures that confirm its position as the Caribbean’s largest and most commercially robust tourism market.

Best short-term rental market: Jamaica’s north coast demonstrated the Caribbean’s strongest short-term rental revenue growth in June, with a 28-percent revenue premium over prior-year periods reflecting both occupancy strength and average daily rate improvement in the Montego Bay and Ocho Rios corridors.

Best property market momentum: St Lucia earned recognition as the Eastern Caribbean’s most dynamic property market in the first half of 2025, with transaction volumes, new development launches, and airlift expansion all reinforcing an investment narrative that is attracting increasing international attention.

Most significant CBI programme: Grenada recorded its strongest H1 CBI real estate transaction volume since 2022, confirming the programme’s appeal and the confidence of international buyers in the Grenadian property market despite the broader hurricane season backdrop.

Most significant economic report: The CDB’s midyear economic outlook, projecting 4.2 percent regional growth for 2025 and documenting the breadth of Caribbean economic expansion, provides the most credible independent assessment of regional economic health and underpins investor confidence across asset classes.

Most pressing challenge: The above-normal 2025 hurricane season, now confirmed as active with early named storm formation, remains the most significant near-term risk to the positive economic and property market outlook, with the peak season window of August–October requiring sustained attention and preparedness.

Overall Caribbean performer of the month: Jamaica earns the midyear overall recognition for the breadth and sustainability of its economic performance — strong tourism, an active domestic property market, advancing renewable energy commitments, and macroeconomic stability that reflects the sustained discipline of its IMF-supported fiscal management framework.

Looking Ahead

The second half of 2025 opens with the Caribbean in as strong a position as it has enjoyed in many years, balanced against the now-active hurricane season that will test that position through August, September, and October. July’s summer tourism performance will be the first major data point for H2, and given the records established in June, expectations are running high for a strong July across the region’s hotel and short-term rental markets. Analysts will be watching whether the early-season hurricane formation translates into intensified activity through the peak months or whether the season tracks toward its activity being front-loaded.

The property market transaction pipeline for H2 2025 looks healthy. The combination of strong tourism yields, a positive macroeconomic backdrop, advancing renewable energy investment, and sustained CBI programme demand creates multiple demand channels for Caribbean property that are operating simultaneously. The risk factors — hurricane season, insurance cost pressures, elevated construction costs, and global interest rate uncertainty — are real and must be incorporated into investment analysis, but they are operating against a demand backdrop that is stronger than at any point since before the pandemic.

For the rental market, July and August will see the peak of summer short-term rental performance, and the revenue data from this period will inform the investment decisions of buyers who are evaluating Caribbean property purchases for the 2025–26 cycle. Strong summer performance typically translates into increased buyer enquiries in September and October — exactly the period when the hurricane season risk is highest but also when properties can often be acquired at prices that have not yet reflected the full value of a strong summer yield season. Investors who can navigate the hurricane season timing with an understanding of the underlying market dynamics may find H2 2025 an attractive entry window.

The Caribbean Property & Investment Review is published monthly and covers developments during the preceding calendar month. All factual statements reflect information publicly available at the time of publication.